


seasons of my love

by KaleidoKai



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Memories, Post-War, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 11:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12168051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaleidoKai/pseuds/KaleidoKai
Summary: The four seasons of Jon's love, and the one that was all year round.





	seasons of my love

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song, "Seasons of my Love" in the ASOIAF universe.

_I loved a maid as red as autumn, with sunset in her hair._

His thoughts pull back to her, time and time again, like rustling leaves swaying with the wind.

Sometimes when he closes his eyes, he can still feel the ghost of her touches, of her kisses, breezy and cold against his skin. The memories slide over him, bathed in a soft amber light, and when he reaches out to grab one, it slips through his fingers like the last breath of a summer tree.

He has come to see Ygritte the same way, as nature's last burst of loveliness: a grand finale, until winter crept in and stole the colour from his world. Until red became blue became black. Until life gave way to death and decay. He thinks he's never seen Ygritte's shade of red on anyone else, but sometimes he glimpses it in Arya's flushed cheeks after a spar, or in the blood of Arya's lips when she bites them when thinking.

Jon does not always want to remember her, but he cannot make himself forget. Years later, he'd wonder if it's her ghost he cherishes: the wildling woman that made his heart sing, kissed by fire, with fierce eyes and burning touches. He recalls the long nights wrapped in her heat, her body radiating warmth much like Arya's would when she'd sneak into his bed as children, a safe cocoon from the threat of winter outside.

Ygritte, who blazed her way into his life, set it aflame, and vanished - who gave him his first taste of death, of its misery.

Ygritte, who had burned with the intensity of a radiant sun, and when she'd set, Jon had been so sure that he'd live his days out without seeing it again.

But when one sun sets, another rises.

 

* * *

 

 

_I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair._

It takes a moment.

One moment, with the scent of freshly cut grass, with walking through the godswood and its blistering heat, with the raging sound of a thunderstorm from the heavens.

Just one moment for her to rise to the forefront of his mind, bathed in golden light.

Val would illuminate whatever room she walked in, her scent clinging to her skin like summer rain, her hair bright and fine as the searing sun, a far cry from the tangled midnight of Arya's head, he thinks amusedly. Where Arya is the night, Val was the morning, both lovely and radiant. If Ygritte was heat then Val was light, gleaming as the brightest star and just as beautiful. Just as unattainable.

He tried to fly to her, where she danced amongst the diamonds in the sky, out of reach. She radiated soaring promise, but such high dreams can only be followed by the mightiest of falls, hopes crashing as his star tumbled to earth by the sword of another: the golden light melding into rivers of red as he tried in vain to seal the wound.

That had hurt. Val had never been his, but he'd relied on her. To watch her crumble like a fragile sandcastle, in the midst of battle, when friends and creatures of ice clashed all around him - that had hurt a lot.

It was naive, but he'd always thought she was beyond the reach of darkness, that this star and her light could never fall victim to the Long Night as the other had. He'd seen one sun set before, he didn't think he could bear to watch another.

But she did, and the darkness came. And Jon learnt to embrace the Night, rather than fear it.

 

* * *

 

 

_I loved a maid as white as winter, with moonglow in her hair._

Time passed, and Jon was soon immersed in a new world, cold and cruel and endless.

Winter had come, and with it, creatures of ice and creatures of fire - and a woman he still does not know. Not truly.

Occasionally, when he is alone and undisturbed, he'd dwell on the enigma of Daenerys Targaryen, his mind struggling to piece together the miasma of memories in an effort to understand the silver-haired Queen with fire and fury dripping from her lips. He is never able to. There is always one piece missing.

His thoughts would then drift to Arya, a woman of ice where Daenerys was of fire. One would have mistaken them as old friends, the Queen who wore the moon as a crown, and the Princess who embraced its night sky as a lover. Two puzzles, brilliant and ethereal, that he tried often to solve. He likes to think he understands one, but the other remains beyond his reach.

When he'd first met her, he could not explain the simple fascination, at her lithe form and the moonlight trapped in her hair. One minute, she was the Dragon Queen, the Mother, the Conquerer, the last of her kind - the next, a vulnerability would line her face and sink into her eyes, and he wouldn't know if it would take a mountain or a breath of air to tear her down. It was as if she was a language to learn, a new book to read, something to understand, to appreciate. He thinks she felt the same way about him, too.

They had tried to learn, to read, to understand one another. But the world did not wait, did not hold its breath for that small moment of wonder.

Daenerys may have worn Winter in her hair, but she could not stop it claiming her in the end. He consoles himself with the thought that she hadn't lived long enough to see the last of her children fall, but he laments the loss nevertheless. He had never thought Winter so greedy as to consume the moon as well, as it had done his sun and his star.

What else was there left to give?

 

* * *

 

 

_I loved a maid as spry as springtime, with blossoms in her hair._

He wonders if it was the right decision, if it was worth torturing himself over a woman he will never meet.

His brother - his cousin - had not blinked when he'd requested it, a sheen of understanding in the sea of blue in his eyes. He knows how difficult it is for Bran to speak of the past, to remember all those they'd lost. They were never just names to him, but faces and memories he'd witnessed and would always keep. Jon feels a pang of guilt for asking him to bear the burden to soothe his curiosity, his need.

Jon had always tried to imagine what his mother had looked like. In his dreams, she was gentle, and lovely, with a clear laugh that he could feel in his bones. In the depths of night, in the safety of his own bed, he'd even dare to dream her opening her arms to him, a brilliant smile on her face, warm and welcoming and home.

Lyanna Stark was everything and nothing as he imagined.

They had sat at the base of the weirwood tree in Winterfell's godswood, his fingers playing with the strands of grass as he heard the chirps of birds soaring above. A taste of sweet nectar hung in the air, and Jon had felt blooming petals gracefully slide across his skin as he ran his hand over a batch of roses nestling by his side. With the arrival of spring, Arya had been particularly insistent with sowing the seeds of every flower north of the Neck, and Winterfell was soon submerged in a spectrum of colour, the fresh smell of earth and nature clinging to the walls and seeping into its cracks, healing the wounds of the past.

They had sat there and Jon had listened. Bran did not tell him of the tales of a girl who'd caught the eye of a married Prince, of the lady who'd forsaken her family's honour, of the dying words of a woman with a baby cradled against her sweat-drenched chest.

Bran told him stories of a girl who loved to swing a sword, with laughter on her lips and humour on her tongue. Who cried at songs and jousted against grown men. He spoke about the winter storms of her eyes and blue roses in her hair, a daughter of Nature who wore its blossoming crown proudly, unapologetically, and challenged the world to steal it from her.

He did not tell Lyanna's son the tales of her tragedy, the ones they sang songs of and would be written in the books. Jon does not care for them. In those stories, he cannot find a woman he'd be proud to call mother, a woman worthy of unending love. But in Bran's words, told with a smile and a laugh, he thinks he's found her. The one he's dreamt of and the one he could love, does love.

He still wonders if it was the right decision to hear the truth of Lyanna Stark, Winterfell's daughter and a queen crowned with blue roses, and he then thinks, yes, it is.

 

* * *

 

 

_I'll drink one more cup for every lass that I've held for a spell._

Jon watches the dying embers of his fireplace, crackling into the silence. The sun has long set, and the moon hides behind stormy clouds, throwing his solar into a grey darkness. The castle has gone to sleep, and he revels in the quietness as he dwells on his thoughts.

When the final spark fades out, Jon lights a candle with a sigh. The flame plays shadows across the room, dancing to an unheard song as it twists this way and that. He stares at it for a moment, before reaching out for his cup of wine.

He spins it in his hand, and the liquid crashes against the sides like an angry bloody tide. Just as he raises it to his lips, there is a knock on the door, dragging him out of his musings.

"Enter!" he calls out.

Arya slips in, soundless as always, and gracefully walks towards his desk. He smiles at her, with her dark hair softly curled and swinging carelessly over her shoulder and down her back, and an odd, daring look in her eyes that strips him to the bone. He watches with interest as the light plays on her red tunic, casting shadows across the ends of her curls, giving them the soft illusion of dripping with sunset.

She clears her throat and grabs his attention.

"Are you alright?" she asks softly, a knowing look in her eyes.

He doesn't respond. He doesn't have to. Arya knows his spells of melancholy, moments where the world would stop and he'd hide away and linger in the past, his head in the clouds. And every time, she'd fetch him at the end, and drag him back to earth, to reality, to her.

She sits on the chair opposite him and reaches for his flask of wine. "Shall we have a toast? And then to bed? It's late, my love." She quirks an eyebrow, the gentle light of the candle immersing her lithe form in golden rays like a sunrise.

Jon bows his head in agreement, and grabs his cup again. "I'm sorry to have kept you awake this long," he mutters with guilt. "I didn't realize so much time had passed."

"You never do," Arya replies, her words laced with humour, but he sees sympathy in her eyes. She, too, has moments of mourning, for loves long passed and a childhood stolen. She understands. She always has.

She raises her flask, and he mirrors her. There is no need for words, there rarely is. He lets the memories soak him for one last time, the kaleidoscope of colours and moments sinking into his skin and his thoughts as he breathes it in...then breathes it out, and its tendrils have loosened and he feels light once more. With his eyes still closed, he drains his cup in one motion, only opening them when the liquid has slid down his throat.

Arya is watching him with a soft smile, and he takes a moment to admire how the moon, breaking through the clouds, dances on her head. A lunar crown for a queen of the night, he wonders briefly, and she laughs at the dazed look on his face.

"Come," she says, grabbing his hand, "It's time to go."

She walks out, with him trailing in her wake. 

 

* * *

 

_You are the seasons of my love_

There is only one constant in his life, and it is her. It's always been her.

He has seen his world change and blow here and there, and he moved with it like the wind, spinning as it spun around him. Arya had soared above it all, his anchor in the sky when he needed it most.

The world no longer spins now, instead he feels lost in the night, so different to the darkness of winter and the blindness after losing the sun. It is no longer a night of blackness, nothing as endless or soulless as the one that had consumed the earth. This night, one that embraced Arya, that cloaked her every step, is seductive and painted in a thousand colours; in the reds of the sunset, in the golds of a sunrise, in the whites of a pale moon, shimmering at the edges and beckoning him with gentle fingers.

This night, her night, is warm and timeless, stretching across seasons and years. It is safe and it is home.

An eternal night.

And he thinks it is not nearly long enough for the two of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much reading, I hope you enjoyed it! As always, your thoughts are much appreciated.


End file.
